We would all win if churches - and atheism - were taxed

Lyle Shelton’s argument misses all of the above. He employs the usual line of defence that Christian churches do good works therefore the religious exemptions can be justified.

Many years ago, the former editor of the Australian Financial Review and Quadrant magazine, the late Paddy McGuinness, pointed out that when religious people do good works, which is mostly welcome, it is voluntary, and as such, it is misleading to reconcile the value of that work to its commercial value.

The truly charitable arms of religious organisations are usually incorporated as separate non-profit entities. Be they religious or secular, so long as their activities are open and transparent, and they do not function as sinecures for their administrations, these charitable activities are welcome.

Lyle Shelton claims ‘there is no systemic evidence of abuse of funds by the non-profit sector’. Really? Here’s some food for thought: on Radio New Zealand on 16 June 2013 Dr Michael Gousmett, a former CEO of a Catholic charity in Christchurch, with a PhD on the history of charity law, and a qualified accountant, described how the Sanitarium organisation in New Zealand paid $10M to its parent organisation, the Seventh Day Adventist Church in 2012.  This was more than the $3M the church paid to its Pacific island charities or the $4M given for elder care in Auckland. He had earlier detailed his concerns elsewhere Please give carefully - National - NZ Herald News

Michael Gousmett noted that between 2003 and 2013 the church had added only 600 new members for a total of less than 12,000 people. When he wrote to the church and asked what happened to the $10M, they did not reply. So less than 12,000 members of a church had $10M dollars to spend. Does Sanitarium make such a generous grant to its parent church every year? Where does this ‘religion as public benefit’ money go exactly? If there isn’t a problem, why won’t they answer Michael Gousmett’s question?

There are two more points here. Not all religious organisations engage in good works. Since religion is by law a form of charity itself, they are under no obligation to do so. Of those that do, not all spend as much as they could. As noted in our article cited above, NZARH research found that some religious organisations in New Zealand have very significant sums sitting in the bank, more than they require for recurrent expenses.

Why? What happened to the Christian principle of giving? Especially when research has shown a quarter of New Zealand children are living in poverty.  If the reader asks is why the New Zealand examples here, the answer is that the Australian  Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission, unlike its New Zealand counterpart, does not have a wealth reporting requirement for Australian religious organisations.

It was curiously omitted, a fact noted by the Not-For-Profit section of the Law School of the University of Melbourne, when the ACNC was established. Despite this omission, the Abbott Government is seeking to abolish the Commission, seemingly at the request of the Catholic Church Church lobby in win over charities watchdog - Sydney Morning Herald

In evidence to the Economics Legislation Committee of the federal parliament on 17 November 1999, the doyen of charity law in Australia, and a defender of  religion as a form of charity, Professor McGregor-Lowndes, said the structure of the Australian Catholic Church was an ‘absolute mystery’ and that it would take a ‘life’s work’ to understand it.

So, apart from what little information there is on the public record, we really don’t know much about the wealth, revenues and expenditures of religious organisations in Australia. If the $5B+ block grant the government currently gives the Church for its schools, each year, was terminated, it follows this $5B+ could go instead straight to public schools, effectively achieving what Gonski recommended. See www.nswrationalists.com

That is a motive, I suggested, for the Catholic Church to want to conceal its wealth. I also made the point that, if the church was prepared to systematically conceal the behaviour of its child abusing priests, as the current Royal Commission is now discovering, could you trust them to tell the truth about their finances?

Lyle argues that if churches were taxed ‘the church would be funding the state, which would arguable be a breach of our constitutional separation of church and state’. Firstly, as I have argued in On Line Opinion  25 September 2008 and 4 October 2010  there is no true constitutional separation of church and state in the constitutional monarchy that is Australia.